Teresa Hill - Heard It Through the Grapevine

“For what you’re doing for me and the baby,” Cathie rushed on breathlessly.

Matt understood what she meant but found himself remembering the last time he’d heard those words. They’d come from Cathie then, too. She’d been sixteen.

He’d thrown the words back in her face as if they hadn’t meant a thing to him. Love seemed to come so easily to her. It was one of the things that had fascinated the crazy, half-wild boy he used to be.

He wanted to tell her there was nothing to love. That it was all an illusion.

But her words now rolled oddly around inside him, his brain, his chest and the pit of his stomach.

I love you, Matt.

Just words. They’d scared him to death all those years ago. Yet they sounded so different to him now….

Dear Reader,

Welcome to more juicy reads from Silhouette Special Edition. I’d like to highlight Silhouette veteran and RITA ®Award finalist Teresa Hill, who has written over ten Silhouette books under the pseudonym Sally Tyler Hayes. Her second story for us, Heard It Through the Grapevine, has all the ingredients for a fast-paced read—marriage of convenience, a pregnant preacher’s daughter and a handsome hero to save the day. Teresa Hill writes, “I love this heroine because she takes a tremendous leap of faith. She hopes that her love will break down the hero’s walls, and she never holds back.” Don’t miss this touching story!

USA TODAY bestselling and award-winning author Susan Mallery returns to her popular miniseries HOMETOWN HEARTBREAKERS with One in a Million. Here, a sassy single mom falls for a drop-dead-gorgeous FBI agent, but sets a few ground rules—a little romance, no strings attached. Of course, we know rules are meant to be broken! Victoria Pade delights us with The Baby Surprise, the last in her BABY TIMES THREE miniseries, in which a confirmed bachelor discovers he may be a father. With encouragement from a beautiful heroine, he feels ready to be a parent…and a husband.

The next book in Laurie Paige’s SEVEN DEVILS miniseries, The One and Only features a desirable medical assistant with a secret past who snags the attention of a very charming doctor. Judith Lyons brings us Alaskan Nights, which involves two opposites who find each other irritating, yet totally irresistible! Can these two survive a little engine trouble in the wilderness? In A Mother’s Secret, Pat Warren tells of a mother in search of her secret child and the discovery of the man of her dreams.

This month is all about love against the odds and finding that special someone when you least expect it. As you lounge in your favorite chair, lose yourself in one of these gems!

Sincerely,

Karen Taylor Richman

Senior Editor

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To everyone at St. Mary’s and all of our friends in Greenville, South Carolina.

Thanks for making our ten years there wonderful.

lives in South Carolina with her husband, son and daughter. A former journalist for a South Carolina newspaper, she fondly remembers that her decision to write and explore the frontiers of romance came at about the same time she discovered, in junior high, that she’d never be able to join the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise.

Happy and proud to be a stay-home mom, she is thrilled to be living her lifelong dream of writing romances.

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

The stick turned blue.

Cathie Baldwin sank down to the floor of her tiny bathroom. Taking stock of her situation as objectively as possible, she decided she’d never been this afraid, this upset or this ashamed of herself.

She was twenty-three, certainly old enough to know better, and they’d been careful, darn it. So careful.

Of course, as mothers had no doubt been telling their daughters for decades, the only truly safe sex was no sex at all. Which was what she’d had for years. No Sex. She’d waited so long, and now that she’d finally found someone she’d thought was special enough to share her bed…now this.

She looked at the test stick again, just to be sure. If anything, it looked bluer than before.

Fine. Tears welled up in her eyes, and she let them fall.

No one had ever cried forever, had they?

She feared she might set a record in the event. Olympic Gold, Longest Crying Jag in History, Laura Catherine Baldwin, the preacher’s daughter. The good girl. Pregnant college dropout who horrified her father’s entire congregation, shamed her parents, infuriated her four overgrown, overprotective brothers, shocked a dozen aunts, uncles and cousins too numerous to count and generally messed up her life.

And her baby’s.

Oh, God, she was going to have a baby.

Cathie thought she was about as miserable as she could be.

Then the lights went out. Everything in the apartment whined down and stopped. The heat, the refrigerator, the computer. Everything.

She whimpered. Honestly, she was the most pitiful thing. On the way to the kitchen, she cracked her toe on the corner of the coffee table, swore softly as she hopped the rest of the way, her toe throbbing.

In the kitchen, she found the big pillar candle on the counter by the coffeepot. But the matches proved stubbornly elusive. She was feeling along the top of the refrigerator when, just as she thought she found them, her hand hit something else.

It rumbled and rolled on top of the fridge, and the next thing she knew, came flying down and hit her on the forehead.

“Ouch.” She put her hand on her poor head for a moment, then reached up and, finally finding the matches, struck one and lit the candle.

Her first stop after that was the little mirror hanging in the hallway, to check the damage. She had a red splotch on her right temple to match her tear-reddened eyes.

She was headed back into the kitchen to see what had hit her when hot wax from the candle dripped onto her hand.

“Ouch!” For a second, she thought she’d caught her pajama top on fire, that she was cursed for sure. Then the lights decided to come back on.

She groaned, blew out the candle, wiped the dot of hot wax off her hand, and then looked down at the mess she’d made of her own floor.

That’s when she saw the little wooden box in the corner by the trash can.

Cathie frowned at it.

Granted, it had been a really lousy day and maybe she was closer to hysterics than she realized.

Because it seemed a lot like God had just hit her on the head.

Warily, she crept over to the little wooden box as if it might have sprouted wings and flown into her forehead, all on its own. But she’d knocked it off the refrigerator.

That was all.

No big mystery there. No odd powers at work.

She felt silly for still having the thing.

It was her God Box. One of the quaint traditions of her father’s church. A turn-it-over-to-God thing. All the kids got one. For problems they didn’t think they could deal with on their own. Cathie had taken an introductory psych class, so she understood the concept. Letting go of things we simply can’t control or change.